Presidential campaign gets serious - just briefly

A Facebook (FB) friend posted recently that he was hoping that the US presidential candidates would begin discussing an issue that he thought a lot about: Should the government expand the earned-income tax credit (EITC), which supplements wages of low- and moderate-income workers?

The response from his FB friends, including yours truly, was swift and took the form of FB icons (also known as emoticons or emojis, such as the smiley face) often used to represent one's feelings. In this case, most of the emojis signified: "I am LOL!" or "Are you serious?", "Are you out of your mind?"

The point the FB friends were trying to make was actually serious. This current presidential election campaign looks and sounds more and more like a cross between a not-very-funny standup comedy routine and an X-rated television reality show. So do you really believe that any of the candidates, their political surrogates or the journalists and pundits who cover them, were going to devote even a minute of their time to discussing how we use the EITC or, for that matter, what to do about America's "nuclear triad", the nuclear weapons delivery system of a strategic nuclear arsenal consisting of three components?